1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a cartridge drive apparatus capable of ejecting a disc by separating a cartridge body when a disc cartridge accommodating the disc is inserted.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the past, various cartridge drive apparatuses for a disc cartridge accommodating optical discs have been used. This type of the disc cartridge drive apparatus includes a shutter opening/closing mechanism for opening or closing a shutter which retracts a cartridge body into the inside of the apparatus body and closes a recoding/reproducing opening formed at the cartridge body. In the disc cartridge drive apparatus, as the recording/reproducing opening is opened, an optical pickup mechanism faces the optical disc in a radial direction, so that writing and/or reading of information signals is performed.
However, the recording capacity of a disc-type recording medium has dramatically increased in recent years, and thus the recording medium has the capacity necessary for storing amount of information to handle on the individual level. On the other hand, even in a case where super-multilayered discs or volumetric recording discs, which will be expected to be put into practical use in the future, are applied to a cloud computer data center or a system demanding to record and store large-capacity of data, the recording capacity of one cartridge will not be sufficient in the future if each sheet is stored in the cartridge one by one in the same manner as in Blu-ray Disc (BD) or professional disc.
In addition, if a data center is configured by using a disc loader machine or cart machine which handles a plurality of disc cartridges which each accommodates a large-capacity disc, it is not sufficient to improve the using efficiency of a space.
As a method of solving the above problems, a configuration, in which several sheets of sheet-like discs are stored in one cartridge, has been proposed by Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2004-134019, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2007-115328, and Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2007-172726. However, since the above configuration demands dedicated as many disc trays as the number of discs which is able to be accommodated therein, it causes the cartridge body to grow in size and in weight. In addition, for example, since it is necessary that the disc cartridge drive apparatus driving the disc be provided with a mechanism for transporting the disc tray and ejecting only the disc from the disc tray, the disc loading mechanism becomes complicated and larger. Moreover, there is a problem in that the apparatus body becomes larger and expensive, for example, since a mechanism for stabilizing rotation of the sheet-like disc is necessary.